Baltics by Tomas Tranströmer
Published 1974 · 88,750 words · about 10 hours at an average pace · Poetry
How hard is Baltics to read?
Baltics scores 55 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 50 out of 100
- Dense Baltic poetry vocabulary in translation.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Complex poetic syntax.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- History, nature, and identity explored poetically.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with Baltic history and imagery.
- Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
- Poetry implies rather than states.
- Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
- The Baltic, stones, history carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 45 out of 100
- Tranströmer writes with meditative seriousness.
- Resolution withholding: 55 out of 100
- Poetry offers contemplation, not resolution.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- Poetry collection with thematic unity.
How Baltics is regarded
Baltics holds a literary regard score of 73 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.